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Thursday, September 26, 2013

Can one foresee whether young scientists will publish successfully during their careers? For academic biologists on four continents, we evaluated the effects of gender, native language, prestige of the institution at which they received their PhD, the date of their first publication (relative to the year of PhD completion), and their pre-PhD publication record as potential indicators of long-term publication success (10 years post-PhD). Pre-PhD publication success was the strongest correlate of long-term success. Gender, language, and the date of first publication had ancillary roles, with native English speakers, males, and those who published earlier in their career having minor advantages. Once these aspects were accounted for, university prestige had almost no discernable effect. We suggest that early publication success is vital for aspiring young scientists and that one of the easiest ways to identify rising stars is simply to find those who have published early and often.

A random sample of new books for sale on Amazon.com shows more books for sale from the 1880’s than the 1980’s. Why? This paper presents new data on how copyright seems to make works disappear. First, a random sample of 2300 new books for sale on Amazon.com is analyzed along with a random sample of 2000 songs available on new DVD’s. Copyright status correlates highly with absence from the Amazon shelf. Together with publishing business models, copyright law seems to stifle distribution and access. Second, the availability on YouTube of songs that reached number one on the U.S., French, and Brazilian pop charts from 1930-60 is analyzed in terms of the identity of the uploader, type of upload, number of views, date of upload, and monetization status. An analysis of the data demonstrates that the DMCA safe harbor system as applied to YouTube helps maintain some level of access to old songs by allowing those possessing copies (primarily infringers) to communicate relatively costlessly with copyright owners to satisfy the market of potential listeners.

The Future of the Sociology of Aging: An Agenda for Action
evaluates the recent contributions of social demography, social
epidemiology and sociology to the study of aging and identifies
promising new research directions in these sub-fields. Included in this
study are nine papers prepared by experts in sociology, demography,
social genomics, public health, and other fields, that highlight the
broad array of tools and perspectives that can provide the basis for
further advancing the understanding of aging processes in ways that can
inform policy. This report discusses the role of sociology in what is a
wide-ranging and diverse field of study; a proposed three-dimensional
conceptual model for studying social processes in aging over the life
cycle; a review of existing databases, data needs and opportunities,
primarily in the area of measurement of interhousehold and
intergenerational transmission of resources, biomarkers and biosocial
interactions; and a summary of roadblocks and bridges to
transdisciplinary research that will affect the future directions of the
field of sociology of aging.

This paper sought to synthesize what is currently known about mentally
ill offenders in American jails and prisons based upon
the most recent government and congressional
reports and relevant literature review. The primary goal is to provide a
detailed
picture of the status of mentally ill
offenders—including prevalence, basic demographic information,
bio-psycho-social status,
mental health, and family histories—and also to
identify the problems, conditions, and obstacles faced while under the
jurisdiction
of the criminal justice system. Mentally ill
offenders are constitutionally guaranteed basic mental health treatment.
A review
of the literature indicates that this
constitutional guarantee is not being adequately fulfilled. Implications
and suggestions
for change are discussed.

The United States Armed Forces were once comprised primarily of single
young men. The military began to diversify as servicemen married and
started families. As women joined the service a growth in military
partnerships and dual-parent military households became increasingly
prevalent. With these changes, coupled with the recent wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, challenges were realized about maintaining marital and
family norms in balance with professional duties. The contemporary era
of wars is hallmarked by longer tours and reoccurring deployments,
further complicating the work-life balance for military personnel. This
decade of wars parallels with innovation of new media and staggering
societal adoption of online platforms for social networking and
information-sharing. The trials and tribulations of deployment for
military members and their loved ones require distinct efforts to
communicate during extensive periods of time apart. With these modern
outlets available to facilitate relational communication remotely, this
study set forth to examine the impact of new media on spousal
relationships in the military. Interviews with ten military spouses who
experienced deployment indicated five themes regarding their use of new
media: (1) mobility, (2) monitoring and surveillance, (3) community,
(4) utility, and (5) uncertainty and urgency.

There is recent evidence that climate change played a role in the
extreme weather events of 2012. The recently released analysis from the
American Meteorological Society determined that:

Approximately half the analyses found some evidence that
anthropogenically caused climate change was a contributing factor to the
extreme event examined, though the effects of natural fluctuations of
weather and climate on the evolution of many of the extreme events
played key roles as well.

Interestingly, many of the states that received the most federal
recovery aid to cope with climate-linked extreme weather have federal
legislators who are climate-science deniers. The 10 states that received
the most federal recovery aid in FY 2011 and 2012 elected 47
climate-science deniers to the Senate and the House. Nearly two-thirds
of the senators from these top 10 recipient states voted against granting federal emergency aid to New Jersey and New York after Superstorm Sandy.

In this report, we examine both the progress made and the challenges
remaining for women across the country. We do so by reviewing three
categories that are critical to women’s overall well-being: economics,
leadership, and health. Within each of those three categories, we
analyze multiple factors—36 factors overall. In selecting the factors,
we were unable to include every metric available but strove to include a
broad array of factors that would help illustrate the multitude of
issues facing women. We also included data on women of color in order to
show the challenges that different communities face.

The short
ontogenetic time courses of conformity and stereotyping, both evident in
the preschool years, point to the possibility
that a central component of human social
cognition is an early developing expectation that social group members
will engage
in common behaviors. Across a series of
experiments, we show that by 7 months of age preverbal infants
differentiate between
actions by individuals that are and are
not consistent with the actions of their social group members. Infants
responded to
group-inconsistent actions only in a
social context: they failed to distinguish the same behavioral
differences when presented
with collections of nonsocial agents or
inanimate objects. These results suggest that infants expect social
group membership
and behavior to covary, before extensive
intergroup experience or linguistic input. This expectation is
consistent with the
socially motivated imitation and
stereotyping evident in toddlers and preschoolers, and may play a role
in the early emergence
of one or both of these aspects of social
behavior and cognition.

Human referential communication is often thought as coding–decoding a
set of symbols, neglecting that establishing shared
meanings requires a computational
mechanism powerful enough to mutually negotiate them. Sharing the
meaning of a novel symbol
might rely on similar conceptual
inferences across communicators or on statistical similarities in their
sensorimotor behaviors.
Using magnetoencephalography, we assess
spectral, temporal, and spatial characteristics of neural activity
evoked when people
generate and understand novel shared
symbols during live communicative interactions. Solving those
communicative problems
induced comparable changes in the spectral
profile of neural activity of both communicators and addressees. This
shared neuronal
up-regulation was spatially localized to
the right temporal lobe and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and
emerged already
before the occurrence of a specific
communicative problem. Communicative innovation relies on neuronal
computations that are
shared across generating and understanding
novel shared symbols, operating over temporal scales independent from
transient
sensorimotor behavior.

The Chinese public is increasingly concerned about the quality of the
country’s air and water after a year in which China experienced
numerous high-profile environmental problems.

Meanwhile, even though most Chinese have rated their national
economic situation positively in recent years, there are also widespread
concerns about the side effects of economic growth, such as rising
prices and the gap between rich and poor.

As of May 2013, 15% of American adults ages 18 and older do not use the internet or email.
Asked why they do not use the internet:

34% of non-internet users think the internet is
just not relevant to them, saying they are not interested, do not want
to use it, or have no need for it.

32% of non-internet users cite reasons tied to their sense that the
internet is not very easy to use. These non-users say it is difficult or
frustrating to go online, they are physically unable, or they are
worried about other issues such as spam, spyware, and hackers. This
figure is considerably higher than in earlier surveys.

19% of non-internet users cite the expense of owning a computer or paying for an internet connection.

7% of non-users cited a physical lack of availability or access to the internet.

Even among the 85% of adults who do go online, experiences connecting
to the internet may vary widely. For instance, even though 76% of
adults use the internet at home, 9% of adults use the internet but lack
home access. These internet users cite many reasons for not having
internet connections at home, most often relating to issues of
affordability—some 44% mention financial issues such as not having a
computer, or having a cheaper option outside the home.

The sharp decline in the U.S. population of unauthorized immigrants that
accompanied the 2007-2009 recession has bottomed out, and the number
may be rising again. As of March 2012, 11.7 million unauthorized
immigrants were living in the United States, according to a new
preliminary Pew Research Center estimate based on U.S. government data.

This study was conducted to determine whether or not school employees are experiencing
compassion fatigue. The research question for this study is: Are school employees experiencing
compassion fatigue? This study included examining ways in which they identified levels of
burnout, secondary trauma and compassion satisfaction. A quantitative study was conducted
using snowball-sampling techniques to administer an online survey that asked participants to
report demographic information and complete the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL).
121 participants identified as fulltime employees of a school and as English speaking and over
the age of eighteen.
Findings point to low levels of compassion fatigue among the sample. Participants
reported low to average levels of burnout and secondary trauma and high or average levels of
compassion satisfaction. Trends in responses and correlations between demographic data and
responses are discussed and explored further to determine the accurate portrayal of compassion
fatigue in the realm of school employees. Implications for future studies and social workers are
discussed.

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that in 2012, real median
household income and the poverty rate were not statistically different
from the previous year, while the percentage of people without health
insurance coverage decreased.

Median household income in the United States in 2012 was $51,017,
not statistically different in real terms from the 2011 median of
$51,100. This followed two consecutive annual declines.
The nation's official poverty rate in 2012 was 15.0 percent, which
represents 46.5 million people living at or below the poverty line.
This marked the second consecutive year that neither the official
poverty rate nor the number of people in poverty were statistically
different from the previous year's estimates. The 2012 poverty rate was
2.5 percentage points higher than in 2007, the year before the
economic downturn.

The percentage of people without health insurance coverage declined
to 15.4 percent in 2012 ─ from 15.7 percent in 2011. However, the 48.0
million people without coverage in 2012 was not statistically different
from the 48.6 million in 2011.

On September 4, 2013, James B. Comey was sworn in as the 7th director
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Comey is taking the helm of
an agency that has been radically transformed during the 12-year term
of Director Robert S. Mueller, III, into a domestic intelligence and law
enforcement agency of unprecedented power and international reach.

The FBI remains widely admired on Capitol Hill and within the Obama
administration, despite a record of extraordinary abuse—particularly
targeting racial and religious minorities, immigrants, and protest
groups under the guise of counterterrorism after 9/11.

The abuse, enabled by a roll-back of post-Watergate intelligence
reforms and encouraged by long-standing Justice Department and FBI
practices, has subverted internal and external oversight by squelching
whistleblowers, imposing and enforcing unnecessary secrecy, and actively
misleading Congress and the American people.

Social networking sites such as Facebook attract millions of users by
offering highly interactive social communications. Recently, a counter
movement of users has formed, deciding to leave social networks by
quitting their accounts (i.e., virtual identity suicide). To investigate
whether Facebook quitters (n=310) differ from Facebook users (n=321),
we examined privacy concerns, Internet addiction scores, and
personality. We found Facebook quitters to be significantly more
cautious about their privacy, having higher Internet addiction scores,
and being more conscientious than Facebook users. The main self-stated
reason for committing virtual identity suicide was privacy concerns (48
percent). Although the adequacy of privacy in online communication has
been questioned, privacy is still an important issue in online social
communications.

Abstract:
Economic and demographic disparities will shape the mobility of labor
and skills during the 21st century. The populations of richer societies
in Europe, North America, and East Asia are aging rapidly, and some are
already shrinking in absolute terms. At the same time, working-age
populations will continue to grow in some emerging economies and in most
low-income countries. Despite these trends, many highly developed
countries and emerging economies continue to assume that today’s
demographic realities will persist. People will continue to move from
youthful to aging societies, and from poorer to richer regions. The
current geography of migration will, however, change, as this policy
brief explains.

While many in the United States will gain health
insurance coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act, undocumented
immigrants are one group that will not see much benefit from the law.
That's because the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants
residing in the United States — most often young, working adults in good
health — are excluded from participation in the new insurance
marketplaces and state Medicaid expansions.
Focusing on the state with the largest number of
undocumented residents ― California ― this report from the UCLA Center
for Health Policy Research and The Commonwealth Fund examines the health
status and health care use of undocumented immigrants and suggests
policy alternatives that could improve their access to needed health
care.

Women’s
experiences have been the nucleus of domestic violence literature,
discourse, and policy, and have shaped the therapeutic and/or punitive
measures that are characteristic of domestic violence prevention –
measures that research has shown are largely ineffective in curbing
violence. Consequently, we still know relatively little about why men
batter, and how they make sense of the negative “batterer” credential
that corresponds with their offense. The few studies that explore
batterer behavior are primarily psychological, reducing their violence
to individual pathology that can be “treated” in therapy. Accordingly,
non-psychological studies are characterized by evaluations of the
utility, effectiveness, and/or therapeutic techniques of Batterer
Intervention Programs, thus missing thesociologicalroots of batterer
behavior. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 15 male batterers, my
research shows that these men make sense of the offenses of which they
have been accused in different ways, both with regard to the role they
attribute to the state in their felt disempowerment and emasculation,
and the role they attribute to their female victims. These different
meanings are attributable to a number of factors – factors I argue must
be addressed to the extent that they are linked to recidivistic risks of
battering. The analysis presented in this paper therefore provides a
foundation for creating more effective social remedies for battering
behavior, and it provides an opportunity to reconsider gender-based
theories of interpersonal violence more generally.

We describe the design and evaluation of a system named Quantified
Traveler (QT). QT is a Computational Travel Feedback System. Travel
Feedback is an established programmatic method whereby travelers record
travel in diaries, and meet with a counselor who guides her to alternate
mode or trip decisions that are more sustainable or otherwise
beneficial to society, while still meeting the subject’s mobility needs.
QT is a computation surrogate for the counselor. Since counselor costs
can limit the size of travel feedback programs, a system such as QT at
the low costs of cloud computing, could dramatically increase scale, and
thereby sustainable travel. QT uses an app on the phone to collect
travel data, a server in the cloud to process it into travel diaries and
then a personalized carbon, exercise, time, and cost footprint. The
subject is able to see all of this information on the web. We evaluate
with 135 subjects to learn if subjects let us use their personal phones
and data-plans to build travel diaries, whether they actually use the
website to look at their travel information, whether the design creates
pro-environmental shifts in psychological variables measured by entry
and exit surveys, and finally whether the revealed travel behavior
records reduced driving. Before and after statistical analysis and the
results from a structural equation model suggest that the results are a
qualified success.

Objective
To contextualise the degree of harm that comes from unsafe medical care
compared with individual health conditions using
the global burden of disease (GBD), a
metric to determine how much suffering is caused by individual
diseases.

Design
Analytic modelling of observational studies investigating unsafe medical
care in countries’ inpatient care settings, stratified
by national income, to identify
incidence of seven adverse events for GBD modelling. Observational
studies were generated
through a comprehensive search of
over 16 000 articles written in English after 1976, of which over 4000
were appropriate
for full text review.

Results
The incidence, clinical outcomes, demographics and costs for each of the
seven adverse events were collected from each publication
when available. We used
disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost as a standardised metric to
measure morbidity and mortality
due to specific adverse events. We
estimate that there are 421 million hospitalisations in the world
annually, and approximately
42.7 million adverse events. These
adverse events result in 23 million DALYs lost per year. Approximately
two-thirds of all
adverse events, and the DALYs lost
from them, occurred in low-income and middle-income countries.

Conclusions
This study provides early evidence that adverse events due to medical
care represent a major source of morbidity and mortality
globally. Though suffering related
to the lack of access to care in many countries remains, these findings
suggest the importance
of critically evaluating the quality
and safety of the care provided once a person accesses health services.
While further
refinements of the estimates are
needed, these data should be a call to global health policymakers to
make patient safety
an international priority.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

This report invites all stakeholders, public and
private alike, to embrace a new commitment to
collaboration, and a new sense of mutual obligation to the critical role of the humanities and
social sciences for a vibrant democracy.

The Heart of the Matter, a report of the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, is
intended to advance a dialogue on the importance of the humanities and social sciences to the
future of our nation. The report was requested
by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee)
and Mark Warner (D-Virginia) and Representa-
tives Tom Petri (R-Wisconsin) and David Price
(D-North Carolina).

Source: American Academy Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences via http://www.humanitiesmontana.org

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

For all intents and purposes, we educate our children in much the
same way as we did a century ago. Despite our stubborn attachment to an
instructional model from a bygone era, technology is set to
revolutionize the learning process. Examples include interactive lessons
that adapt to a specific student’s learning style to lectures taught by
a single professor to tens of thousands of students around the world
who are enrolled in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Such
innovations have the potential to radically alter the nature of
learning.

Adaptive technology is defined as software that learns
and alters itself based on the user’s inputs, while allowing for
interaction with a broad base of learning styles. Adaptive technology
software fills the role of the coach/tutor.

Should this technology
be adopted in classrooms, it holds the potential for changing a teacher
from a “one-size-fits-all” instructor to an individual learning coach.
Using adaptive technology, students can learn material through an avenue
of their choosing and at the pace that best suits them; when they
encounter a difficulty, the teacher can step in and coach them past the
problem individually or in a small group, while their classmates
continue. In many cases the software is becoming advanced enough to
recognize when the student is struggling, and is capable of pre-empting
the need for intervention by the teacher.

Two key areas of
adaptive learning require additional research in Canada. First, we need
better quantitative, empirical research about the benefits of adaptive
technology and its successful implementation and use. The second area
pertains to policy barriers for the introduction of adaptive technology.
Other questions, such as the cost of potential technologies, teacher
training, and quality control, are also relevant.

The Internet has become a new battleground between governments that
censor online content and those who advocate freedom to browse, post,
and share information online for all, regardless of their place of
residence. This report examines whether and how furthering Internet
freedom can empower civil society vis-à-vis public officials, make the
government more accountable to its citizens, and integrate citizens into
the policymaking process. Using case studies of events in 2011 in
Egypt, Syria, China, and Russia, researchers focus on the impact of
Internet freedom on freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, and the
right to cast a meaningful vote, all of which are the key pillars of
political space. Researchers analyze the mechanisms by which Internet
freedom can enhance the opportunities to enjoy these freedoms, how
different political contexts can alter the opportunities for online
mobilization, and how, subsequently, online activism can grow out into
offline mobilization leading to visible policy changes. To provide
historical context, researchers also draw parallels between the effects
of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty programs in the Soviet Union during
the Cold War and the ongoing efforts to expand Internet freedom for all.
The report concludes by discussing implications for the design of
Internet freedom programs and other measures to protect "freedom to
connect."

As heads of state get ready for the United Nations General Assembly in two weeks, the second World Happiness Report
further strengthens the case that well-being should be a critical
component of how the world measures its economic and social development.
The report is published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions
Network (SDSN), under the auspices of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.
Leading experts in several fields – economics, psychology, survey
analysis, national statistics, and more – describe how measurements of
well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations.
The Report is edited by Professor John F. Helliwell, of the University
of British Columbia and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research;
Lord Richard Layard, Director of the Well-Being Programme at LSE’s
Centre for Economic Performance; and Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs,
Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Director of the
SDSN, and Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General.

As lawmakers return for what promises to be a busy fall session, GOP
congressional leaders face mounting disapproval among Tea Party
Republicans. Just 27% of Republicans and GOP leaners who agree with the
Tea Party approve of the job Republican leaders in Congress are doing,
compared with 71% who disapprove.

The job rating of GOP leaders among Tea Party Republicans has fallen
15 points since February, from 42% to 27%. Disapproval has risen from
54% to 71% over this period. There has been no similar decline among
Republicans who do not agree with the Tea Party. Currently, 42% of
non-Tea Party Republicans and Republican leaners approve of how GOP
leaders in Congress are handling their job, which is little changed over
the past year.

In the national debate over gun violence—a debate stoked by mass murders such as last December’s tragedy in a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school—a glaring fact gets obscured: Far more people kill themselves with a firearm each year than are murdered with one. In 2010 in the U.S., 19,392 people committed suicide with guns, compared with 11,078 who were killed by others. According to Matthew Miller, associate director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center (HICRC) at Harvard School of Public Health, “If every life is important, and if you’re trying to save people from dying by gunfire, then you can’t ignore nearly two-thirds of the people who are dying.”
Suicide is the 10th-leading cause of death in the U.S.; in 2010, 38,364 people killed themselves. In more than half of these cases, they used firearms. Indeed, more people in this country kill themselves with guns than with all other intentional means combined, including hanging, poisoning or overdose, jumping, or cutting.
Though guns are not the most common method by which people attempt
suicide, they are the most lethal. About 85 percent of suicide attempts
with a firearm end in death. (Drug overdose, the most widely used method
in suicide attempts, is fatal in less than 3 percent of cases.)
Moreover, guns are an irreversible solution to what is often a passing
crisis. Suicidal individuals who take pills or inhale car exhaust or use
razors have time to reconsider their actions or summon help. With a
firearm, once the trigger is pulled, there’s no turning back.

The road to better jobs, more money and improved lifestyles is paved by
education, according to a new Nielsen survey. More than three-quarters
(78%) of global online respondents agreed that receiving a higher
education, such as college, is important. Likewise, three-fourths also
believed that better employment (75%) and higher income (72%) are
accessible because of educational opportunities.

The Nielsen Global Survey of Education Aspirations polled more than
29,000 Internet respondents in 58 countries to measure consumer
sentiment on the availability of educational opportunities at all levels
of study and the resulting opportunity for job and salary advancement.
While the opportunity to receive a quality education is a
multi-dimensional topic with underlying socio-economic factors to
consider, the findings help shed light on what the future holds for both
consumers and companies alike in the context of driving innovation,
economic advancement and social development.

Since the early 1990s, the United States has borrowed
heavily from its trading partners. This paper presents an analysis of
the impact of an end to this borrowing, an end that could occur suddenly
or gradually.
Modeling U.S. borrowing as the result of what Bernanke (2005) calls a global saving glut—where
foreigners sell goods and services to the United States but prefer
purchasing U.S. assets to purchasing U.S. goods and services—we capture
four key features of the United States and its position in the world
economy over 1992–2012. In the model, as in the data: (1) the U.S. trade
deficit first increases, then decreases; (2) the U.S. real exchange
rate first appreciates, then depreciates; (3) the U.S. trade deficit is
driven by a deficit in goods trade, with a steady U.S. surplus in
service trade; and (4) the fraction of U.S labor dedicated to producing
goods—agriculture, mining and manufacturing—falls throughout the
period.

Using this model, we analyze two possible ends to the
saving glut: an orderly, gradual rebalancing and a disorderly, sudden
stop in foreign lending as occurred in Mexico in 1995–96. We find that a
sudden stop would be very disruptive for the U.S. economy in the short
term, particularly for the construction industry.

In the long term, however, a sudden stop would have a surprisingly small impact. As the U.S. trade deficit becomes a surplus, gradually or
suddenly, employment in goods production will not return to its level
in the early 1990s because much of this surplus will be trade in
services and because much of the decline in employment in goods
production has been, and will be, due to faster productivity growth in
goods than in services.

Google Scholar has been well received by the research community. Its promises
of free, universal and easy access to scientific literature as well as the
perception that it covers better than other traditional multidisciplinary
databases the areas of the Social Sciences and the Humanities have contributed
to the quick expansion of Google Scholar Citations and Google Scholar Metrics:
two new bibliometric products that offer citation data at the individual level
and at journal level. In this paper we show the results of a experiment
undertaken to analyze Google Scholar's capacity to detect citation counting
manipulation. For this, six documents were uploaded to an institutional web
domain authored by a false researcher and referencing all the publications of
the members of the EC3 research group at the University of Granada. The
detection of Google Scholar of these papers outburst the citations included in
the Google Scholar Citations profiles of the authors. We discuss the effects of
such outburst and how it could affect the future development of such products
not only at individual level but also at journal level, especially if Google
Scholar persists with its lack of transparency.

Comments:

This paper has been accepted for publication in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (via Cornell University Library ArXiv)

The World Statistics Pocketbook, 2013 edition is an annual
compilation of key statistical indicators prepared by the United Nations
Statistics Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Over 50 indicators have been collected from more than 20 international
statistical sources and are presented in one-page profiles for 216
countries or areas of the world. This issue covers various years from
2005 to 2012. For the economic indicators, in general, three years -
2005, 2010 and 2011 - are shown; for the indicators in the social and
environmental categories, data for one year are presented.

The topics covered include: agriculture, balance of
payments, education, energy, environment, food, gender, health,
industrial production, information and communication, international
finance, international tourism, international trade, labour, migration,
national accounts, population and prices. The technical notes contain
brief descriptions of the concepts and methodologies used in the
compilation of the indicators as well as information on the statistical
sources for the indicators. Reference to primary sources of the data is
provided for readers interested in longer time-series data or more
detailed descriptions of the concepts or methodologies.

Friday, September 06, 2013

A new study on teen dating violence has found that lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender teenagers are at much greater risk of dating
abuse than their heterosexual counterparts. Transgender teens are
especially vulnerable.

Analyzing data from their larger study, “Technology, Teen Dating
Violence and Abuse, and Bullying,” researchers at the Urban Institute
provide one of the first examinations of dating violence and abuse
through the distinct lens of sexual orientation and gender identity. Of
the 3,745 youth in 7th to 12th grades, in New York, Pennsylvania and New
Jersey surveyed in the study, six percent identified as lesbian, gay,
bisexual or transgender.

Thursday, September 05, 2013

This datafile contains the U.S. TIMSS 2011 data, including data that
were collected only in the United States and not included on the
international database available from the IEA. The additional data
relate to the race and ethnicity of students and the percentage of
students in a school eligible for the Federal free and reduced-price
lunch program, among other variables. This datafile is intended to be
used in conjunction with the international datafile available from the
IEA.

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

The Criminal Diaspora: The Spread of Transnational Organized Crime and
How to Contain its Expansion, examines the multiple factors leading to
the international expansion and diffusion of organized crime networks.
Government efforts to dismantle or displace criminal groups have helped
push them beyond traditional borders, while new markets and rising
demand for illicit products have led criminal groups to expand their
networks. To account for this phenomenon, The Criminal Diaspora moves
beyond the analysis of specific countries to examine “criminal
clusters,” such as the so-called “Mexican cartels”—with international
linkages between criminal groups operating in the United States, Central
America, and the Andes—as well as Colombian and Brazilian clusters.
Many criminal groups have now established links and operations
throughout the hemisphere and beyond, including in Africa and Europe.
New and expanding illicit markets, the fragmentation of criminal
organizations, and increased deportations of criminals from the United
States to Latin America have contributed to what the authors call a
criminal diaspora, the spread of crime and violence throughout the
region and beyond.

Abstract:
As the Syrian civil war drags into its third year with mounting
casualties and misery among the civilian population, and the large-scale
use of chemical weapons, interest in the possibility of military
intervention by the United States and its allies is growing despite U.S.
wariness of becoming involved in a prolonged sectarian quagmire.
Without presuming that military intervention is the right course, this
report considers the goals an intervention relying on airpower alone
might pursue and examines the requirements, military potential, and
risks of five principal missions that intervening air forces might be
called on to carry out: negating Syrian airpower, neutralizing Syrian
air defenses, defending safe areas, enabling opposition forces to defeat
the regime, and preventing the use of Syrian chemical weapons. It finds
that (1) destroying the Syrian air force or grounding it through
intimidation is operationally feasible but would have only marginal
benefits for protecting Syrian civilians; (2) neutralizing the Syrian
air defense system would be challenging but manageable, but it would not
be an end in itself; (3) making safe areas in Syria reasonably secure
would depend primarily on the presence of ground forces able and willing
to fend off attacks, and defending safe areas not along Syria’s borders
would approximate intervention on the side of the opposition; (4) an
aerial intervention against the Syrian government and armed forces could
do more to help ensure that the Syrian regime would fall than to
determine what would replace it; and (5) while airpower could be used to
reduce the Assad regime’s ability or desire to launch large-scale
chemical attacks, eliminating its chemical weapon arsenal would require a
large ground operation. Any of these actions would involve substantial
risks of escalation by third parties, or could lead to greater U.S.
military involvement in Syria.

The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate
poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes
cognitive function and present two studies that
test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about
finances
and found that this reduces cognitive
performance among poor but not in well-off participants. Second, we
examined the cognitive
function of farmers over the planting cycle. We
found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before
harvest,
when poor, as compared with after harvest, when
rich. This cannot be explained by differences in time available,
nutrition,
or work effort. Nor can it be explained with
stress: Although farmers do show more stress before harvest, that does
not account
for diminished cognitive performance. Instead,
it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity. We suggest
that
this is because poverty-related concerns consume
mental resources, leaving less for other tasks. These data provide a
previously
unexamined perspective and help explain a
spectrum of behaviors among the poor. We discuss some implications for
poverty policy.

compared to those two age groups, emerging young adults often have the lowest perception of risk and

this age group has the least access to care and has the highest uninsured rate in the United States.

In other words: "Emerging young adults are adrift in the perfect storm of health risks".
Too often they are considered the "young invincibles" needing
only catastrophic health coverage when in fact they need broad
comprehensive health coverage.
Our goal in producing this chart book is to provide health
care providers, health care networks and vendors, institutions, and
policy makers with the data they need to make informed decisions about
broad health care coverage and health prevention interventions in
emerging young adults.
A national "emerging young adult" health agenda must be
developed for this at risk age group. This should include thoughtful
health care research, programs and national and state policies regarding
delivery and access to health care.

The volume and richness of the data now uniquely accessible to mobile
providers—whether in the form of transactions, inquiries, text messages
or tweets, GPS locations or live video feeds—offers a veritable gold
mine of insights and applications. And even as mobile phones have become
the primary device through which consumers get their information, those
very same devices have begun to facilitate new types of information,
including extremely precise, real-time, geolocation information.

Not surprisingly, operators today are talking about when and how to
tap into this data and what to do with it. In particular, they want to
know how to monetize it: how to sort, analyze and manipulate the data
and put it to use. This holds true not only for internal applications,
but increasingly for building new revenue streams or collaborating on
external applications with third parties as well.

How can mobile operators best approach this new territory? What are
the opportunities and challenges? And how can operators shape new
business models to monetize their Big Data?

Considerable research suggests that girls are more anxious about math
than boys, but a new study dives deeper to distinguish the general
anxiety young people report about the subject from what they may be
feeling in math class or at test time. It turns out the latter,
“real-time” anxiety is about the same for boys and girls, the study
finds.

Math anxiety among females has long been of concern because, as the
new research points out, prior studies have shown that it “negatively
predicts” course enrollment, career choices, and lifelong learning in
math fields. This is also connected to the worrisome underrepresentation
of females in STEM fields. And the higher degree of math anxiety stands
in contrast to research showing that female students typically reach
“similar, or only slightly lower,” levels of math achievement as boys,
the study says.

Researchers from several German universities and McGill University in Montreal teamed up for the project.

The economic recession that began in California in 2008 did not affect
all counties equally. Using data from several years of the California
Health Interview Survey, this policy brief examines the differences
between 2007 and 2009 for the populations who were uninsured "for all or
part of the prior year." During this time period, counties with high
unemployment and lower household income saw the highest growth in the
uninsured population, due to a large drop in job-based coverage and only
a small increase in public coverage. Compared to the uninsured
population in California in 2007, Californians who were uninsured for
all or part of 2009 were older, more likely to be U.S.-born citizens,
had lower household incomes, and were more likely to be unemployed and
looking for work.

In conflict and disaster settings, medical personnel are exposed to
psychological stressors that threaten their wellbeing and increase
their risk of developing burnout, depression, anxiety, and PTSD. As lay
medics frequently function as the primary health providers in these
situations, their mental health is crucial to the delivery of services
to afflicted populations. This study examines a population of community
health workers in Karen State, eastern Myanmar to explore the
manifestations of health providers' psychological distress in a
low-resource conflict environment.

Asynchronous, computer based instruction is cost effective, allows
self-directed pacing and review, and addresses preferences of millennial
learners. Current research suggests there is no significant difference
in learning compared to traditional classroom instruction. Data are
limited for novice learners in emergency medicine. The objective of this
study was to compare asynchronous, computer-based instruction with
traditional didactics for senior medical students during a week-long
intensive course in acute care. We hypothesized both modalities would be
equivalent.
Methods
This was a prospective observational quasi-experimental study of
4th year medical students who were novice learners with minimal prior
exposure to curricular elements.

Over half of the new small schools created between the fall of 2002
and the fall of 2008 were intended to serve students in some of the
district’s most disadvantaged communities and are located mainly in
neighborhoods where large, failing high schools had been closed. MDRC
has previously released two reports on these “small schools of choice,”
or SSCs (so called because they are small, are academically
nonselective, and were created to provide a realistic choice for
students with widely varying academic backgrounds). Those reports found
marked increases in progress toward graduation and in graduation rates
for the cohorts of students who entered SSCs in the falls of 2005 and
2006. The second report also found that the increase in graduation rates
applied to every student subgroup examined, and that SSC graduation
effects were sustained even after five years from the time sample
members entered high school.

This report updates those previous findings with results from a third
cohort of students, those who entered ninth grade in the fall of 2007.
In addition, for the first time it includes a look inside these schools
through the eyes of principals and teachers, as reported in interviews
and focus groups held at the 25 SSCs with the strongest evidence of
effectiveness.